In Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film Contempt, Paul Javal is a playwright hired as a script fixer for a movie about Ulysses. He decides that this original Odyssey -- essentially Ulysses taking way too long to get back to his wife Penelope, who is all along beseiged by troublesome suitors -- should be written with a modern sensibility.
Javal lives in existential Europe of the 1960s. It is a cold godless universe, each individual bearing the weight of endless choices and the burden of their consequences. In his quest to understand Ulysses, Javal begins to look at the world through Ulysses eyes as only a 20th century Frenchman could. His wife becomes Penelope. His brash American producer becomes her relentless suitor.
Living the story takes over Javal's life. There is suddenly a distance between him and his wife Camille, which terrifies and angers her. Even as his marriage starts to deteriorate, Javal can't break the spell of his art.
Here is the difference between the artist and the dabbler, I think. The artist opens herself up to the experience. She follows the disturbance rather than giving it a comfortable makeover. She pursues her art no matter how alienated and lonely it makes her feel. The great filmmaker Kurosawa once said, "To be an artist is never to avert your eyes."
How many of us have that kind of courage?
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